Category - children

As the number of children living under siege has doubled in less than one year to nearly 500,000 amid escalating violence across Syria, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called forthe lifting of sieges and allowing of immediate humanitarian access.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons’ report, Children in Custody 2015-16: an analysis of 12 to 18-year-olds’ perceptions of their experience in secure training centres and young offender institutions will bepublished today.

Some 20,700 people have been displaced since the operation to liberate the Iraqi city of Mosul from terrorists started on 17 October says the United Nations Children’s Fund estimating that 9,700 of them are children in urgent need of assistance.

A major drive to end the criminalisation of children living in residential homes will be launched today by the Howard League for Penal Reform.The two-year programme will be led by the charity with support from an advisory board and will be chaired by Michael Gove, a former Secretary of State at both Justice and Education.

Arrests of children have fallen by 59 per cent in the last five years after a concerted effort by police across the country and a successful campaign by the Howard League for Penal Reform to keep as many boys and girls as possible out of the criminal justice system.

In an official press release, the organisers of the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games have accused Brazilian tribal peoples of infanticide, sexual abuse, rape, slavery, torture and other “harmful traditional practices”, prompting outrage among human rights campaigners.